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Good summary, Quentin. I’ve mostly been using Wikimedia Commons, Unsplash, and Pexels lately, plus a few of my own.

I’ve heard people recommend Adobe Firefly as one possible ethical source. Their site https://www.adobe.com/products/firefly.html claims “Trained on Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content, and public domain content, Firefly is designed to be safe for commercial use.” They also say they are compensating Adobe Stock creatives whose images get used. Likely not free after beta ends, but the fee might scale if their images can fill many needs.

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Finding suitable images for an article or blog post has always been a pain in the behind. Before AI came along, the (ethical) choices were: (1) use Creative Commons licensed images from Flickr or Google Image Search. (2) Use free stock photography. (3) Pay for stock photography. (4) Grab your camera and take your own photo. I have used all four options extensively.

The siren song of AI-generated images is strong, but the point about unfair use is extremely compelling. I would love to be able to have a source of 'ethical; AI imagery from models that were trained exclusively on non-copyrighted or "creative-commons"- type material.

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